Just a quite post-sep thread to say congratulations to Alan and the team, here's to a clean checkout and small TCM's Many thanks for taking the time to share the experience to date with us here, your efforts are very much appreciated.

I think it's amazing that people like Alan and his crew can put together such a mission and initiate it. I mean, there must only be a handful of people on this earth that have the technical knowledge to do that.

My question is that once the craft wakes up 6 months prior to the Pluto encounter, will it have time to take one or two pictures and send us a teaser image of Pluto? I think it'll drive me crazy to know that NH has a ton of images but we'll have to wait a few weeks before we can see any of them.

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QUOTE (Boxcarx @ Jan 19 2006, 04:20 PM)

My question is that once the craft wakes up 6 months prior to the Pluto encounter, will it have time to take one or two pictures and send us a teaser image of Pluto? I think it'll drive me crazy to know that NH has a ton of images but we'll have to wait a few weeks before we can see any of them.

Alan addressed this at the press conference. Observations from the approach will be transmitted to earth on a daily basis until shortly before the approach. If I recall correctly, 6 weeks before the encounter, NH images will supass the best that Hubble can do. So there should be lots of pictures of Pluto looming larger.

TTT

P.S. Alan also announced that some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes are on board, as was surmised by many members here.

I join to this topic to express that I am very grateful to hear from your replies and also of your friends from NH team. I am very impressed of the organization NH team that is composed many groups (NASA, Boeing, Lookheed Martin, UJHAPL, Alan's university, what else that I cannot recall it or haven't heard of it).

Also many thanks for the USMF manager, Doug, to provide us the great tool so that we can join and share about the NH's ride to Pluto!

I join to this topic to express that I am very grateful to hear from your replies and also of your friends from NH team. I am very impressed of the organization NH team that is composed many groups (NASA, Boeing, Lookheed Martin, UJHAPL, Alan's university, what else that I cannot recall it or haven't heard of it).

Also many thanks for the USMF manager, Doug, to provide us the great tool so that we can join and share about the NH's ride to Pluto!

Congratulations to a good return on all the hard work! There's a reason things go right and that is due to the dedication and professionalism of the team leaders and members. And thanks for visiting us as well -

To Infinity and Beyond!

--------------------

Lyford Rome"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!" Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Assuming that there are quite a few people working on the NH program, what do they do during the big gaps of no activity of the space craft? Are they shared among other programs within NASA? I can't imagine a job where I'm free to go for 7 or 8 years and then I have to come back!

Assuming that there are quite a few people working on the NH program, what do they do during the big gaps of no activity of the space craft? Are they shared among other programs within NASA? I can't imagine a job where I'm free to go for 7 or 8 years and then I have to come back!

P.S. Alan also announced that some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes are on board, as was surmised by many members here.

Wonderful news. I am glad to know that the first human to leave our Sol system for the larger Milky Way galaxy (in some form at least) will be Dr. Tombaugh. He certainly deserves the honor.

Does anyone have or know where images of the capsule holding his ashes can be found? Where were they placed on the probe? Did a commemorative plaque or other message accompany them?

And if NH is ever found by starfaring ETI or our descendants, perhaps they will also have the technology to analyze Dr. Tombaugh's remains to learn something about a representative sample of a Twentieth Century human being from Earth.

I did a Google search for the news, and this is the odd place I found it (scroll way down):

Voyager 3 had actually been considered, but Voyager was a JPL project. They better start naming some other deep space probes Voyager 3 and so on, otherwise we won't have V'Ger to deal with in 300 years!

"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

I'd have thought that would be something of a private matter between Clyde's family and Alan.

Doug

The container and commemorative plaque for Eugene Shoemaker aboard Lunar Prospector was shown in public and with a fair amount of pride by its makers and his family.

I wasn't asking for a view of the ashes, just wondering if they had some kind of marker for it.

It's just nice to know that I once shook the hand of the first man to leave the Sol system.

--------------------

"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

Voyager 3 would have been a very good name for historical reasons, in spite of the fact that the spacecraft looks quite different from Voyagers 1 and 2. (But in a hundred years no one will care about that.) It's a pity they couldn't use it.

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